Crypto currency and its future

Crypto currency is a medium of exchange like normal currencies but designed for the purpose of exchanging digital information through principles of cryptography. It is an encrypted decentralized digital currency that is transferred between peers and confirmed in the public ledger through the mining process. In order to know about crypto currency we need to understand their terms. Specifically:

1)                  Public ledgers:

All the transactions that are confirmed from the start of crypto currency creation are stored in public ledger. The coin owner’s identities are encrypted and the system uses other cryptographic techniques to ensure the legitimacy of record.

2)                  Transactions:

Transactions are the transfer of funds between two digital wallets. Transaction gets submitted in public ledger and waits for confirmation.

3)                  Mining:

The process of confirming transactions adding them to public ledger is mining. In order to add transaction to ledger, the miner must solve a most critical computational problem.

Today the word of crypto currency is moving very fast.  Over the past years different new crypto currencies came into market. Each one differs with few features. There are top 5 crypto currencies that will go up in value by 10x-100x over the next couple of years. They are:

·         Ethareum: Using Ethereum you can create a contract that will hold contributors money until any given date or goal is reached. It is best outlier and works on decentralized network. It grew 1000% over past few months and can increase in future too.

·         Factom: Factom is the crypto currency that is called as notary chain and it should grow a lot by this year. It allows company to create unchangeable database. Factom stores data in their own blockchain and then create hash of that data and stores it into a bitcoin blockchain. The market of Factom is very huge.

·         Maidsafe: Maidsafe in another crypto currency and a decentralized database. Instead of storing data on your computer, you can encrypt and upload it on decentralized server. No one can access your data without your permission.

·         Bitcoin: Bitcoin is a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to generate currency and verify funds transfer. It is a payment system released 2009. Bitcoin is also termed as cryptocurrency. The popularity of bitcoin has increased more in recent years.

·         Ripple: Ripple is mostly used in banking systems. Not only bitcoin and ethareum, but Ripple has raised the value by almost 3000% this year.

These crypto currencies are one of the biggest opportunities for investors in the world.  Ethareum, Factom, Maidsafe, Bitcoin, Ripple all do something different from each other and also complete each other. Their adoption rate is fast and all are necessary for future point of view. Forget about stock market and gold. Cryptos are a revolution and if you don’t want to get behind get started.  

GST & ITS IMPACT ON INDIAN IT INDUSTRY

The long awaited Goods and Service Tax or GST is scheduled to be launched on 1^st July 2017. GST is an indirect tax that replaces different state and centre taxes. GST is a tax that is levied on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods and services at national level. Hence it is going to impact on various industries such as IT, Banking and Finance, Service, etc.

Let’s see how GST will have an impact on IT industries in India.

One of the most important factors that impact the success of GST is the strong IT backbone that connects all trade and industries, state governments, banks, other stakeholders, etc. on real-time basis. By eliminating multiplicity of taxes such as service tax, entry tax and VAT it simplifies the levy and valuation on composite transactions.

India is the biggest sourcing destination for IT industries as it provides various services such as Software Development, Mobile App Development, Web Designing and many more. These are one of the most important sectors that are likely going to be impacted. India accounts for approx. 67% of US $124,130 billion market in IT sector.

Tax Structure: Present

The sale of packaged software is entitled with VAT and Service tax. VAT rate is about 5% in the state and rate of Service tax is about 15% including Krishi Kalyan and Swachh Bharat cess. In the case of manufacturing of IT products, the excise duty is also applied.

Suppose if the software comes in Hard Disk/ CD then the taxes involved are -

·         Excise Duty (for manufacturing product) .

·         VAT and Sales Tax (for sale).

·         Service Tax (for providing service as software can be downloadable multiple times).

After GST

The assesses needs to register in each state for his business. All the service providers are registered under Central Service Tax Department and Billing, and utilization of credit is done from one location. All the offices need to register their location. There will be no difficulty for the firms having only one location. But MNCs will lead to difficulties if not taken care of this issue.

Tax rate may come as 18% to 20%, so it may lead to increase in tax portion under GST. Therefore the cost of IT Services will rise, especially for end customers who do not usually claim the input tax credit. Under current tax regime overall rate of indirect taxes is come under 20% to 25 %( including VAT, Service Tax, Excise duty), and GST rate may come under 18 to 20 %. Due to this, price of IT product may be cheaper but IT service is expansible.

Hence the MNCs incur more cost on infrastructure. But after GST cost of IT product may be cheaper. In just a matter of time we will all come to know the overall impact of GST on the IT industry. For now it’s time to sit back, relax and let the GST go in action.

Solving the Hosting puzzle! Shared VPS or Dedicated

Want a website! Most website companies now days provide the clients with hosting solutions inbuild  in their packages. They might tell the customer that they provide unlimited hosting free with the website package the customer has selected. But is it true?
Does the customer really need an unlimited webspace on a shared server or is there a thing like this first?

For this question to be answered we need to first understand the difference between Shared, VPS Virtual private server and Dedicated Server

Shared server is a web hosting server a little powerful than your home based desktop on which sometimes 100s of website similar to yours are stored. They are allocated specific space on the server harddisk and are bound by the physical limitations of the server's hardware capabilities. In shared server the space is limited by the harddisk number and thus can slow the performance of your website.

VPS or Virtual Private Server means a server which is hosted on multiple platforms and your website or application is shared on these multiple platforms. This server might be confused with a Cloud server by some "Intelligent" service providers, but it is not.For more information about "Cloud Server" I will write a different Blog.

VPS reduces the fetching time of your web application and database and thus is faster compared to Shared server.  Being on multiple platforms means but with similar configuration means that it can give speed to your website without compromising on the space issue.

Dedicated Server is the big daddy of "Physical Server space" in the industry. Here actually the customer hires complete server space for their websites or applications The client or the user has complete control over the harddisk space available on the server and how they want it to be divided into application and database lairs of the system. The system can be controlled for speed and access specifications of the website thus the user has control on how fast he wants his website to be displayed. Dedicated servers are the costliest of all the mentioned catagories, but are most recommended for large web portals and web applications.

Both VPS as well as Dedicated Servers can be issued with SSL certificates for security reasons. Even shared servers can be given SSL certificates but are not recommended.

Thus based on your requirements select well between Shared, VPS and Dedicated servers

Selecting the best domain for your website

Selecting a domain name for your website is always a challenge for any startup or business. Should it be a .com, a .net or a .org is always a confusion for the business owner and his team. Currently there are over 100 different domains in the market and selecting the exact one is a bit of challenge.

Having a .COM domain is still preferred for a majority of business as they think that having a .COM domain will increase their presence on google listings. Nothing can be further from the truth now days! Now Google focuses more on the content rather than the .COM or any other domain TLDs.

Now many branded domains are coming on the market and such domains are now finding a better alternative to the traditional .COMs of the early 2000s. Now many country based domains like .IN for India are getting popular alternatives to the .COM and .NET domain, but even so many cheaper domains like third level domain like .NET.IN are also making waves and new companies who are finding their .COMs harder to find or already taken can easily book their .NET.IN domains.

For professionals or business now branded business related domains are more popular than the .COM.

People tend to remember you easily by your profession than your .com or company

More on such domain will be posted in my next blog.

Finally I would conclude by saying that any other domain name than a .COM can also give you professional results and so don't hesitate to experiment with these new non traditional TLDS